


An Axe behind My Mind

by Etnoe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Kidnapping, M/M, Rescue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-10
Updated: 2012-09-10
Packaged: 2017-11-13 23:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat gets kidnapped. When Gamzee finds out, the only solution he has is to ... just go with the flow.</p><p>And competence? From Gamzee Makara? It's more likely than you think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Axe behind My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Untagged things you might want to take note of for the rest of the story: mentions of dismembering, Aradia♠Vriska, and uh, slight mummification.
> 
> Written for a kink meme request here: http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/7587.html?thread=11274147#cmt11274147  
> I love a storyline where a character gets kidnapped/taken away for some reason and their SO/family member goes batshit/walks on the wrong side of the law/toes the line and does _anything they can_ to save them.
> 
> No matter what.
> 
> * * *

TC: know what  
TC: i like you, i like all you motherfuckers.  
TC: we're all being like friends, it's motherfuckin miraculous.  
TC: keep it that way.  
TC: WHICH WAY DO I GO?

"Theriouthly, what the shit?" Sollux typed messages with one hand and tugged reflexively at an ear with the other. They'd switched off their text-to-audio converters, but he wasn't going to forget in a hurry how the programme translated Gamzee's new typing quirk.

It should be a joke. It had been. Haha, how adorably pathetic, the clown's found out KK's been disappeared, now he's acting serious about saving his Best Half-Dead Friend and making demands on everybody's attention while they're putting together a rescue. Got to take care of his endearing emotional meltdown, he even stopped taking the time to type like an asshole!

Then an electronic approximation of Gamzee's voice came howling and scraping from the speakers, lower or louder with each new message, and the programme parameters really shouldn't have allowed for that much expressiveness. The urge to soil yourself got in the way of computer usage.

"Was he always thith fucking creepy? He's not thith fucking creepy, I've known him thinthe we were like five thweepth old." Karkat had introduced them. Right as that thought threatened to swamp Sollux under emotion again, a reply to one of his messages came through - from Terezi, good. Cracking the encryption would be distracting.

"It would behoove you not to talk to me in such a filthy manner," said Equius, dependably. "Consider yourself fortunate - I would object more _strongly_ if this matter were not urgent, and if you weren't almost more incomprehensible than degenerate."

"Fuck you thidewayth with a thauthage thcreamthicle, and have fun figuring out where I added an 'eth'." Sollux thumped a fist into his head like it was possible to beat back the impending headache. "God! Thith is getting thtupid. Let'th agree to focuth on busineth."

"Acceptable." Equius cleared his throat. "After all, the highblood awaits the execution of his order."

No, Sollux Captor, he told himself, you don't care how hard he mouth-breathes. KK's in trouble that can only get worse, and he can help.

"I've received a reply from Aradia," Equius said. "She's pretty sure she's on to the right kinds of ghosts. Something about the quality of the screams."

"Ugh," Sollux said in absent empathy. "Well, good, Terezi's thent me more files. Tho far it doesn't look like anything tholid on the people we're looking for, but you can extrapolate from where the info overlapth and tell Gamzee about anything promithing."

He looked over his shoulder. Across the lounge block Equius sat hunched in his seat, fingers poised over the keyboard and his face covered with a blue sheen. "Perhaps we could first reassure the highblood that we're at work on this task. He's sent more messages—"

"Why'd you wait tho motherfucking long to tell me about thith here happening, my betht friend mine, better not be all letting me hang for too long brothers, blah-blah-honk." Sollux faced his computer screen. "I got the githt hours ago. You can take charge of talking to him, I don't need more convinthing that clowns will kill me in my thleep. Then get back to figuring out where KK is."

The delicate, rapid tip-tap-tip of Equius's typing started up. He'd reinforced the keyboard immediately after arriving at Sollux's hive stem block, having agreed to help find Karkat at Nepeta's pleading. They were using Sollux's programmes and operating system for maximum speed, but the way Equius could build and rebuild hardware out of materials ranging from yoghurt to titanium made Sollux feel inadequate and embarrassingly admiring.

"It's - it's almost - perfectly exquisite," said Equius, showing once again why the admiration was embarrassing. "That the highblood should at last accept his heritage - and grow to realise that the peasantblood is only as good as a belonging to him - and so provide even such a vile character a wholly fitting and satisfactory place in society—"

"You're going to exthplode," Sollux said morosely. "I can't hear it yet, but thomehow I thtill know you're going to bleed out and die from an aneurysm in your bulge. Go ahead and jutht make thith day perfect."

An interlude of more mouth-breathing. And typing. Zahhak was a real workhorse; you had to give him that. Thematically appropriate and all.

Sollux was finding it difficult to get back into the rhythm, his nerves nagging at him. He gave in to compulsion and switched to a Trollian viewport. "What getth to me is how he keepth walking."

While Equius had taken to watching for every new purple word on his chat window, Sollux had tagged Gamzee with a viewport when they could no longer ignore that he had, as promised, set out to make things right for his best friend. There was obviously a real danger he'd get lost ambling after stray rainbows - but by that time Gamzee had already left his home shoreline far behind and got onto a road, and his pace hadn't wavered since. Vision twofold didn't add much to the sight. It really felt like it ought to.

"It'th jutht Gamzee. Thame guy we've known forever, and he's been like a machine ever thinthe Kanaya told him. He didn't even know where he was going at firtht! If AA's voithes hadn't found those people with the thcuttlebuggy he'd have got fried halfway to noon, and would he _even have fucking notithed_?"

Equius grabbed desperately for the stack of towels beside his computer. "He - this—" He swallowed audibly even from behind about five towels, then lowered them again. "This is what he is capable of - and always has been. This is who he was born to be."

Unstoppable. That was the word that came to mind. It would sound stupid with the lisp.

"Good," Sollux said. He turned half his attention to Terezi's message, because for him it was more than enough to be careful about decrypting the rest, and the other half stayed on Gamzee. He was slouching steadily through city streets, holding an open husktop braced awkwardly against a hip and a juggling club in his other hand. "Good. Then we're getting KK back."

Sollux was starting to hear voices - couldn't tell how many, couldn't tell whose, and he begged Karkat's not to show up among them - pinprick screams from the imminently deceased getting louder and more immediate as Gamzee walked on.

"Thith is officially the plan, all right? Aradia can conthentrate on getting information rather than getting closer, and never mind about getting Eridan to throw his theadweller weight around or shoot anybody, it will take too long for him to get there. Thith is the plan now. We point Gamzee in the right direction and watch. Our lovable clown freak to the rescue. What the hell is thith entire thituation?"

"I accede to that idea," said Equius, breathless.

"Colour me shocked."

"But, er - perhaps it would be best not to tell the others, as yet. Uh. Excessive, though admittedly understandable disbelief would hinder our progress." He shrugged uncomfortably as Sollux raised an eyebrow at this show of disbelief in Gamzee's abilities, and then straightened. "We should, however, tell the highblood."

 

*

 

On bad nights, Gamzee liked to talk to Karkat. And to Tavros, and to Equius - now, Equius in particular knew all about how a routine kept things going even-like, all smooth. He had a lot to say on the subjects of rage and breaking, purpose, focus, punishment.

It kind of blended all together beyond a place where Gamzee got his understanding from. Routine, though, it did help. A motherfucker takes care to keep chill, to do right by his own self and his friends, and a night tends to roll over and get to being good. Can't help it in the face of such a wicked sweet onslaught! And those nights when the walls heaved, those nights when there was something a lot like the hole at the end of it all getting closer, those nights and days went on so long; then routine got you even if you didn't bother getting around to it. Somebody would chime the Trollian alert and bring a note of down-to-the-ground music back into your think pan.

This was a new kind of bad night, a redefinition on highest order: Karkat was gone. The way Kanaya told it, all endless ice-angry, the intention behind it was to have him gone for good.

Karkat had been real happy to be the revolutionary that started fights to hide their Heiress sister Feferi's bigger revolution. Gamzee had been happy for him - it had to be satisfying for him to have something real to sink some of his bite into. None of them had expected the bite back to come so fast and so thorough, taking their good bro right the motherfuck away from anywhere he ought to be.

It was the kind of situation where you had to get right into helping out. Gamzee had a feel for that. There were times you sat back and let things come along all natural and leave you where you needed to be. There were times you placed yourself before all that was natural and bent it, hard, as much as you needed. A lot of his friends were good at that bending, and breaking, which he was always telling them pretty much scared him. For Karkat he would try to be.

There needed to be a new kind of routine, good for helping him to help out on this bad night: One footstep and then the next.

The routine made things simple and made them a haze. Soon enough he was told which way to go, Sollux and Equius arguing across his husktop screen. They knew about Karkat and that they had to be all helpful about it. Smart. He kept thinking about the next footstep and then the next - and when he got his lucky ride, one bump underneath the buggy and then the next. You had to think like every inch of the way was another fight. Then it was easy.

His friends said the city was where he had to be, and his strangers had been happy enough to function as a way to drive on straight through the day to get him there. Their scuttlebuggy was plated-up enough to handle it properly, so how could they find a way to refuse when he'd got his notice on to that? Only three of them, after all, and all their gnawsome worry.

Turned out it was their first time to really travel too, and he had spared some words for all their worry on how it was unlikely Aradia's ghosts might turn to zombies further on; he never had had so much as one shambler around his place, and he knew what to watch out for from Kanaya's stories about her daytime funfests. After that they'd all stayed quiet, them watching him only about as much as necessary and quite polite on the fact that he didn't give a shit to eyeball them back.

He'd never been to the city before. Maybe it was beautiful - colours, lights, so many voices - even more than it was busy and full of bumping elbows. He couldn't go and get distracted, though. Gamzee had headed up the tunnel roads, and on these levels the sun's heat was brighter and kept the roads emptier. And he kept looking at Karkat's dimmed bar on his Trollian chumproll. That was the thing to keep in mind. He almost always said when he'd be offline a long time; not this time. The motherfucker was plain-and-simple gone. Imagine, that guy being made silent.

It was easy. You know someone for so long then you can't help getting to know how they could be taken apart, sad and true. It was impossible; how could his cranky best friend never talk again, spitting screaming reams of words like the finest slam poetry without trying? Imagine that there was nothing and nobody to be that kind of loud and smart, impatient and permanent - Karkat Vantas made into nobody and nothing. Echoes, even to him.

Saddest motherfucking thing that was never going to be.

He kept walking, kept finding a fight in each step, kept feeling like _waiting wasn't going to get him anywhere_ , and his friends knew he was all up and waiting here, and if he needed to find them instead for getting in the way then _that's how it's got to be_. Mostly, he walked. A bad night, all these walls starting to look full of the endless space behind them ... all you could do was keep on the routine, and it had to be the new one until he broke enough of everything to get the old one back.

Then Trollian chimed, like the freshest of miracles. Hot and cold dropped down inside Gamzee's spine, and he stumbled in his rush to look at the computer screen.

Blue text, not grey. He couldn't stop walking yet. Well? _Good._ That was a miracle too, _why the motherfuck not?_ It was getting to feeling like he hadn't really had much of a fight yet.

He did stop, though. For a short, sharp heartbeat and a smile.

His good bro Equius was pretty reliably a guy he could not get to making sense of, hard to please about trying so hard to please, if that was what he was actually doing at any given time. Sometimes, though - and it would be great to get his remember on strong enough to tell Equius about it - he did hit the target. He had a way with all those uptight words.

CT: D --> We are p001ing all our other resources to find the holding facility  
CT: D --> The e%ecution of the physical aspect of the rescue is up to you now  
CT: D --> And Vantas is fortunate enough to be wholly yours.  
CT: D --> We should be able to tell you shortly where to go

Gamzee thought he'd like to fold that solemn second-last line up dark and deep inside, and maybe he managed not to get it lost up in there - and then he settled the husktop back against his side and went to close in on the people he needed to convince of the facts, twirling the club in his other hand. 

 

*

 

It came down to screams, and it did it fast.

Equius routed as much power to Aradia as her mainframe could take, and she dragged dead voices closer to her from areas that Terezi had flagged. Members of Karkat's cell of revolutionaries had sent through info that the attackers had fought to kill until they saw Karkat's blood, and had then switched to incapacitation, and some had overheard shouts about 'the lab'. Chances were that he'd been taken to a place where murders were clinical and investigative, where ghosts would speak of dying cut open, and a mutant might be taken to see what could be discovered. Sollux tentatively confirmed and rejected some leads, listening carefully as he watched Gamzee. They all pieced together a path around corners, down alleys, and hoped they passed the right closed doors.

"Yeah. Yeah, that one. I don't know." Sollux cut short a groan, hands pushing against his temples. "But people are going to die right there. Loudly."

"It is an extremely _strong_ option all around..." Equius dithered briefly, and then puffed out his chest and called on his authoritative tone. "This is the best hope we have. We must assume it's the correct place."

The building was tied to an organisation on the legislacerators' C-list - deeply suspicious, but not yet big or dangerous enough to sanction automatic prosecution. It was in an area with many chemical engineering businesses in various shades of illegal and legal. Whoever had organised the attack, all clues indicated that criminals had executed it. If those criminals happened to know people who knew people who'd like to test what you could get out of mutated haemochemistry... It was conjecture and circumstance, but it was the best hope.

"Looks real ordinary," Gamzee said, and closed his husktop and went closer. Typing would take too long, when this was it. No one was close by that he could see or hear, the clearest sound only the industrial hum of the neighbourhood, _and this was it_.

Dark grey and squat like most buildings around here, the laboratory was set far back from the street. Plaque on the outside wall, though he walked through the gate too fast to read it. No street-facing windows. Flimsy front door. Two security guards standing on either side of it, but only for another few seconds.

Way in the distance of Gamzee's mind were things he knew about the High Subjugglators; strands pulled together out of schoolfeeding, the databases that highbloods got access to, dreams that the recuperacoon couldn't dull entirely down. He had that history with the vague idea that it was a thing lots of people would say you could be proud of, and now, now the history had him. It _fit_ to have a hand tangled so tight in hair that the skull curved his palm, and of course it fit to have a jawbone jagged around the ball of his club. Ha, how could it not?

He took their keys and weapons. The door was unlocked and inside it was quiet; nobody was ready so he walked past the counter to a door at the back, grinning when they shouted at him to get away.

Five here, one in doctor's plastics and - _there were psychics_ , getting a glow going as they turned. Gamzee's sylladex split open in flashing colours - aw, way too pale - to hurl a storm of anything inside around the block, and bombs from the one guard made the night's first good punch line.

Yellow and brown: rich, bright, and everywhere. Three of them were dropped and had become nearly pure streaks of their essence, and that was much, much better.

The others came in from the front block, all four ready now, and two more with them. The husktop had decent weight for a discus-throw across the block - only enough to knock a motherfucker off course, but still, it left his left hand free to grab a dropped syringe. He stepped back to where the smoke was thick.

Would they watch out for each other? Or maybe they'd figure out fast that he could feel free to drop whoever made a move or a sound in this greyness, and strike each other out on sheer twitchiness. He was quick while the smokescreen lasted to get them done with and get them rattled, way fucking quicker than they expected to have these circles run around them! Fast enough that he missed the most of that blow - all those bullets - maybe only half _this desperate motherfucker's teeth_. He stumbled. But getting loose was simple as the rip of fingers hooked in the fleshy corner of his mouth and tearing up a long line of distraction.

Hot maroon, thick blue, deep mingled browns, such splashing messes with no time to make something more of them. Purple spilling vivid down his own opened-up leg.

" _Good one_ , motherfucker!"

It got quiet.

Eventually.

Gamzee jangled his collection of keys and key cards as he walked, doing up a steady beat, having the idea that it wouldn't do to get impatient. It was better to calmly match the right-looking key to each lock he found, and there was time, since there didn't seem to be much of anybody else around the place. C-list organisations were pretty small a lot of the time, they'd told him.

He went down a staircase and got an underground feeling about the corridor at the bottom - no more windows. Of interest were stains on the walls and floors, here and there: thud-splatter shapes in colours that would have been beautiful, but scrubbed to vague shades on the grey walls.

Block one along the way was a little cove leading to more doors, three each on the right and left sides, each with a window. The locks were different. No keyholes, but fingerprint scanners. The first door on the left had a splash of a dry stain on it ... maybe it was from a maroonblood or brownblood, but it was so new nobody had got to scrubbing at it yet.

Another step and right there, there you are motherfucker, through the window Karkat looked back at him.

Crouched down, shaking such a little bit that you wouldn't notice if you didn't know how to look for weakness. One fisted hand as his only weapon and the other palm-flat on the floor to hold him up. He might never have been so scared before - but hey. His boy had life left after all. There was all the time for that to change any second from here on.

His face contorted as he stared at Gamzee. Terror got beat down by recognition and disbelief in turn, and then ... he looked really cranky.

 _What_ the _fuck_? said Karkat, voice no doubt booming in his little cell though it was silent from this side. Gamzee laughed and swung his club onto the lock, shot it with the gun he'd got along the way, dropped that, shaking the shock out of his arm, and smashed with the juggling club again. Circuitry flared blue-white around the doorframe and then the door popped open, and he strode in and grabbed his very motherfucking best friend's shirtfront in one hand and then his legs were gone-away goodbye and he was on his knees.

"As drug-induced rescue fantasies go I could never, ever be high enough for this one, Gamzee? Gamzee, what the fuck!"

"You're all here." The back of his hand pressed into Karkat's chest and Karkat grabbed his forearm. Solid and warm as he got, even with a broad spill of dried red-brown down his front. They'd stripped him of that all-spikes uniform he liked nowadays, and Karkat looked something like he used to sweeps ago in black trousers and a t-shirt. "One whole piece of you. A real miracle, motherfucker."

"Oh god, oh god, don't remind me, oh god. Where are the others?" Now Karkat's legs let him down and he dropped into sitting position, staring hard at Gamzee's face. "Seriously, if you're a hallucination I'm awarding myself all points for originality. Then, fine, these grubfuckers can have my puzzle sponge. Any fucked up parody of science they want it for."

Rasping and gasping as fear overpowered the anger, and an over-bright look to his eyes so Karkat seemed strange and different from how he knew his best friend, but - that meant it was all of him and even more, and Gamzee said those words: "'Wholly yours'." Karkat ought to get to feel how beautiful it was to know your very own place in all the universe.

Was that what he knew? Mirthful merciless motherfucking gods, was this what it felt like?

Karkat stared in the surprise of all of it. Gamzee shook his head in wonder, and then opened his mouth and didn't know that he'd say, "I'm so motherfucking hungry."

"Like that's the worst thing wrong with you! How the fuck did you get here—" the hand on his arm clenched "—and nearly all this blood isn't yours? Are you okay? You had better fucking really be here!"

He kissed Karkat. It knocked a stutter into the fall and rise of his best friend's breath, and he smiled as Karkat kissed back, desperation and relief in a burst of pressure.

"Scenes like this should be like, 'I'm so grateful I could kiss you'. Then cue humorous _bluh_. Oh, god," said Karkat, "I'm so doped. It was an injection, now I can't even walk. Think. Anything."

"Don't I know all about that, bro." Gamzee sat back, then slid over along the floor to put an arm around Karkat's shoulders. He blinked and it stayed dark a longer while than expected; his eyeflaps were heavy. "Took a full kind of time to get at you, and I am all up and done in. I got to slam some wicked elixir in the worst way."

"Fuck it," said Karkat. "Give me some. Fucking thirsty, I'll take any swill. Then we get out, right the fuck out."

"You want pie, my best bro?" At the thought of it he was suddenly dizzy like the whole world sometimes got after he'd eaten a lot of it, and the flashing of the miracle modus didn't help. His sylladex was pretty empty though, and they were lucky to get a Faygo among the last horns and paint cans.

"Thanks. Now I know I'm not crazy. No pie. Give that." Karkat turned the bottle upside down in his mouth and choked, then drank more carefully until he was halfway through. He handed it back and Gamzee downed the rest.

"Me, I'd motherfucking love a slice straight up going down the gullet. Hasn't even been that long since I got to have me some." Only the night before, right? He'd only headed out to find Karkat the night before.

"How did - Gamzee, the blood." Karkat's eyes darted over him. "Who came with you?"

"Oh yeah. Good question, brother. Some serious kinds of seriously helpful motherfuckers will want to be up in the know about this. Hold up, I'm being right back." He braced himself against the floor to get up, coaxing his muscles towards the idea that they weren't as much like water as they felt.

"What? No, don't - you can't! _Fuck_!" Karkat hissed a last sound that was too urgent to be a word as Gamzee walked out with a trailing wave.

Halfway down the corridor, he paused. Oh yeah. There was that smell.

A breeze blew from the blocks above and filled his mouth and nose with a scent that was also a memory. It was on him too, of course it was, all these thick colours sticking to his skin and clothes and the treads of his shoes had to leave their mark, and he might have got used to it already. He went on, no more pausing.

Sounds came up near the front of the building, but none as needed thinking on, only an alarm down one corridor with no one moving to respond. No one moved at all, still tangled-torn the way they'd dropped, which you had to call a good thing in this situation. Then he picked up what he'd hoped to hear: Trollian's alert for updated memos.

He wiped as much sticky brown off his husktop as he could with his shirt. Its case was cracked and the screen fuzzing, but not too badly. The mustard text-wall on it was fine for the reading. He started partway through, because there was more text appearing at the bottom.

TA: ju2t tell u2 iif he2 there you 2orry 2hiit2ucker!  
TA: real geniiu2 on my part 2endiing you two take care of everythiing  
TA: iim 2o 2orry you dumba22 dont know why ii thought youd make iit alone  
TA: although ii never heard 2o much a2 a 2QUEAK from you 2o youd better be aliive  
TA: and iif you are then JU2T BY THE WAY Zahhak made a liittle mii2take about promii2iing that 2acred uniion wiith you gettiing KK nook-and-bulge for priivate use. haha, who the fuck know2 what he wa2 thiinkiing, you know that joke2ter

Near the middle of the staircase to the cells, he dimly heard Karkat shouting - all _Gamzee_ and _okay_. He was getting his loud right back! "On my way, best friend," he called back when he was closer. "Just reading all these salty sorts of things our bro Sollux has got to say."

TA: That lab really 2eemed liike the be2t optiion  
TA: no, you know what, ii'm fuckiing 2URE that2 the riight place, AA even got a pretty 2traiight an2wer out of that gho2t. 2o youd better be all riight and fuck ii hope KK iiiiiie6o7i8p[ YOU FUCKSTAIN GAMZEE ARE YOU OKAY 

Gamzee waved at the screen. Looked like Sollux had gone and realised he was back on the viewports, now that he had Trollian access again.

"What do you mean, reading?" Karkat yelled, and barely lowered his voice as Gamzee came back in. He strained forwards with tension, legs held at awkward angles beneath him. "Where is he? Or anyone? How the fuck would you stroll out there alone?"

"It's all been made chill, bro, nothing out there needs worrying about. And these wicked genius guiding bros Equius and Sollux were on Trollian for every—" he sat down, taking Karkat back under an arm "—step of my way. Couldn't have made it so quick if it weren't for that kind of miracle-smart they were being. But you tell me something, best friend. You're always saying how this motherfucker Sollux here is saying stuff he doesn't mean. So if he's all worried, he'll be throwing the frontiest mess of words around in any kind of way, is that right?"

He didn't really need the answer. Karkat stared only at the door, dully panicked, blearily watchful - and he'd grabbed Gamzee's arm the instant it settled on his shoulders. Whatever anybody said, that was a real thing for his attention to hook on. 'Wholly yours.'

"Sollux talks more shit than me. Almost. Ignore him. It is fucking quiet out there."

"Yeah, bro, had to make it that way. Can't be having some bunch of motherfuckers taking my best friend away from me."

Karkat's eyes dragged away from the door and locked on him. Gamzee smiled back, and it felt kind of nice to see Karkat as confused as most people didn't seem to know it was easy to get. "That worried brother's on our visual case over Trollian. Aw, look at him all happy to see you, he even skipped some twos."

And there was something else. Gamzee straightened as he read.

TA: shitshitshit kk thank god  
TA: thank clown god2 even  
TA: Gamzee ii take back everythiing ii 2aiid about you even when iit wa2 true  
TA: and ii wiill be 2o much more thankful and al2o laugh at KK later, but now you two have two get out. TZ wiill be leadiing her team down to clean that place out. iif you even left anyone to arre2t, GZ, but whatever.  
TA: 2he 2hould be there 2oon. 2omebody probably notiiced the noii2e you made. hell, wiith the way KK2 gang2 been fuckiing thiing2 lately more than one 2quad miight come on priinciiple, 2o hurry. 

Now that. That was something to consider.

Karkat had said he couldn't even walk. Gamzee said, and he was pretty sure it was him, that miracles were limitless.

His legs had burned with overuse and his arms had been stiff long before he got inside this lab, but in those moments of need upstairs it had made little difference. So what if there was now the burn on his nug and the cut and bitty dark bruises from where some syringes went in? The Legislacerators ... their history was a long, long thing wherein they always had believed in their ways and means of fighting. That Terezi, she was all kinds of sharp edges and nobody was smarter. The thought seared on the way in like air after drowning.

TC: i have all my faith within me  
TC: and the mirthful messiahs have nothing to say about BL1ND PROPH3TS. COME AT ME, SISTER. 

"Gamzee," said Karkat. "What?"

He just sounded motherfucking tired. The weakness of him was beautiful for the faith in it - he chose to stay leaning against Gamzee's side in a slow-warming curve, too trusting to move even as he stared hard at the screen.

"I can get you out," Gamzee told him, preparing to stand. "Can't do less than I came all of the way here to do."

TA: 2hell fiight be2iide you, not agaiin2t you! 2he2 your fuckiing friiend!  
TA: 2hell giive up her po2iitiion and that would al2o fuck half FF2 plan2 riight iin the face all becau2e youve gone fiifty 2hade2 of ape2hiit! GET THE FUCK OUT! 

The far wall exploded.

"That was getting embarrassing to read, so it seemed like a good time to break in," said Aradia. "Sollux, you remember that you have psionic powers, don't you?"

The woman floated in a blaze of light, pure power amassed in lightning clouds around her fists and feet, blighting out any colours but the grey-edged reflection of her metal and the burn of red eyes. She was rebel sun-glare against the night sky she'd split the building apart to show. Her voice boomed above falling rubble, great slabs of grey and glass and whipping wires flung into the dust billows around the shield of her telekinesis.

If you were gearing up for the world to break, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was it.

TA: can't deal wiith fuckiing anythiing anymore  
TA: get them out, 0k? 

Aradia made metal and lightning into pure elegance by just reaching out a hand towards Gamzee and Karkat; and like another ghost, a huge, white-bright copy of her hand formed at their cell door and reached in. It scooped half-closed around them and then with a jack-knife jerk they were falling up, _up as motherfuck_ and faster than down could dream of.

"Oh god oh god oh god—" Karkat yelled even above the wind that went too fast to take a breath of, a crossways lump over Gamzee, arm around one of the giant fingers as Gamzee hooked his legs around another. They spared an arm each to hold each other and clung palmwards with all strength.

Finally - coming on slow - but finally ... they hit a stillness.

Gamzee raised his head. The moons were that much bigger, here, and air was ice-clear against the rankness of his hands and clothes. Then he turned over, still keeping hold of Karkat, to look between two giant fingers - but there wasn't any way to tell what was down in that web of lights; a city marked up with buttery, warm ground stars. How did it look so safe?

"I'm glad you're alive," Aradia said.

"Are we? I'm not fucking sure—Gamzee, stop _moving_! If you fucking fall!"

He turned carefully to look at both of them. Aradia had a grin going, although they all knew that their robo-sister almost never smiled. The way she looked right now, that might be for the best.

"Sis," said Gamzee, voice as tumbled round and wavering up and down as he felt. "You know, you are for real motherfucking scary?"

She watched him. For a long kind of while, but Aradia blinked pretty funny, pop-pop-spark. It was cool.

Gamzee sagged back into the outstretched hand, its energy fizzing through his skin and feeling like it went into his head. Like the moons, the sky stars were a lot bigger too, and their pale colours easier to see. His thinking let go.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Aradia said.

The flying went off in a sideways direction and it drifted a bit into his mind that Tavros would've been pumped about this part. Karkat got thankful a ways along, saying Aradia was the best nuclear glow stick he knew and Gamzee was dumber than adulterated goatshit getting for getting sliced up. He got to asking about how dead his revolutionary sisters and brothers happened to be. Mostly a lot less dead than some people were, but Gamzee patted him on the shoulder in as much consoling as heavy, filthy hands could give. Karkat yelled at him about not holding on. So he did, and set off yelling about how he ought to hold on to Aradia's big old miracle hand rather than to Karkat. It wasn't much of yelling, grumbles that came out unexpectedly soothing, especially with the numb, spilling grip he tried to keep on Gamzee.

"I'm going to your hive, Gamzee," Aradia said, hollow voice booming above the wind. "It's the closest place we can use as a base and it's isolated enough to be safe."

It took all too much effort to raise his voice to shout back. "Sounds like a thing that can't be getting better, my bitchtits robo-babe!"

"Good. Yeah. According to plan. No, bad!" Karkat jerked up to look at her. "We're lighting up the sky. Easy to track."

"I thought of that. I'm putting you in my sylladex so that I don't have to carry you psychically. I won't be nearly as visible if I use less power."

"Is that safe?" Karkat said, and sagged back. "Whatever. The out-of-control hand of braindeath grab-ass isn't any better."

Gamzee tightened his grip on Karkat and shouted to Aradia, "You just file us under 'one big motherfucking mess'."

Yeah, she really didn't smile much in the normal way of things. The joke just got her taking out an empty captchalogue card. Karkat snarled about it, but the classification worked - that was the funny part! With a flash of light they were both someplace far away, dim and quiet together.

 

*

 


End file.
